This morning, my three-year-old daughter uttered seven words that fill many mothers with dread: “Mummy, can you come on the trampoline?”
As a mother of five children, having been through four vaginal births, an episiotomy, and natural twin labour (with one breech) – and having had more stitches than Frankenstein’s monster – I should be no stranger to the world of embarrassing leaks and incontinence pads. After all, an estimated one in three women suffer from bladder incontinence, a condition that can come about due to weakened pelvic floor muscles after childbirth.
In fact, having read Nadia Sawalha’s recent admission that she has suffered from incontinence for 13 years, since the birth of her daughter, it seems nothing short of miraculous that, while my stomach might have seen better days, my pelvic floor is as reliable as a Dyson.
Why? I live in France. Here, at each of my eight-week checks following the birth of my children I have been prescribed 20 sessions of physio to “re-educate” my pelvic floor.
The first time this procedure was prescribed (alongside a prescription for something called “vaginal probe”), I did what most sane women would do. Put it at the bottom of my in-tray and tried not to think about it. However, on speaking to French friends I decided to give it a go.
As a nervous, body-conscious Brit, I was terrified when I first walked into the local physio’s office for my appointment. He strolled up, all dark eyelashes, stubble, and the kind of casual chic that only a French man in an unbuttoned white coat can carry off, and instructed me to disrobe and lie on the bench – covering my modesty with a towel – while he left the room.
So far, so dignified.
Then, on his return, he attached my “probe” to the wires on a little machine, covered it in a generous serving of lube and asked me to “put it in”, while he casually averted his eyes.
Fiddling around under my towel, in a desperate attempt to remain dignified in this most disconcerting of situations, I had to blush as I squished the probe into place. I was then asked to squeeze my pelvic muscles, making little lines on the screen jump – measuring the strength of my overworked undercarriage.
Unperturbed by this most awkward of situations, the physio looked at me with his brooding eyes. “I am sorry,” he said. “But if you turn it. It will be better.”
Cue more fumbling; followed by the mother of all squelches.
The physio remained blase. Me, slightly less so. However, after a couple of sessions, I could feel the difference in my pelvic floor. I no longer felt the worrying bounce of a threatened prolapse when I went jogging; I developed a cold and hacked to my heart’s content without fear of urinary feedback.
My embarrassment tipping point, too, became more robust. I was able to whip off my knickers and scoot under the towel as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Then came part two of the treatment. Stimulation.
The physio adjusted two buttons on the screen and suddenly I could feel a pulse of electricity where no pulse of electricity should ever be felt. “Say when it is too strong,” he said, turning a dial. I duly did. Then lay there for five minutes as my muscles were worked in the manner of a Slendertone, just in a very different place.
Of course, while the embarrassment or comic potential of this kind of procedure is high, there is a serious point to make. Although electrical stimulation can be prescribed on the NHS, referrals to special “continence centres” aren’t routine. And an estimated 50% of women don’t seek treatment in the first place. But with the necessary, fairly small equipment, this treatment could even be offered – as it is in France – by local professionals rather than at specialist centres.
So, why in the UK are we encouraged by adverts to accept incontinence pads as inevitable when in France doctors routinely prescribe this treatment (as well as physio for the abdomen)? And since when did incontinence get euphemised with the term “sensitive bladder”?
Whether the problem is our inability to talk about it, or simply that the treatment isn’t commonly offered, it’s hard to say. But, if I, as a serial birther, can now leap on the trampoline with glee – surely British women, too, should be offered the chance to swap a few hours of embarrassment for a lifetime of dry knickers?
